Requiem at Reichenbach
by Alixtii
Summary: It is as if the whole universe were set in motion to bring us to this moment, Holmes. Holmes works with Moriarty as he solves his first case.
1. Surely you recognize the importance

**Requiem at Reichenbach**: Part I

* * *

Surely, Holmes, you recognize the singular importance of Porluck. Without him, our game of cat and mouse would have been impossible. His was the variable that balanced the equation of our matched wits.

Which is not to say that there was any unique significance to Porluck himself, of course. He was a common enough man, of whose mold London is filled with thousands of plaster copies: a thief, a fool, a follower. But that someone should play his rôle, that some actor should when the curtain rose speak his lines and make his gestures, was absolutely imperative to the design of both our lives.

Where would we be now, Holmes, were it not for Porluck? None of us can say for sure. I have taught you how even an infinitesimal change can, over repeated iterations, produce results that render the output virtually unrecognizable from the input. A single fleck of dust can so alter the path of an asteroid so as to crash it into a planet or to drive it into the star around which it orbited. Or, if such a fate had hitherto been destined it, then the same fleck of dust could be that which grants it reprieve. So would it be in a world without Porluck. Perhaps I would be the undisputed ruler of London, of England, of the British Empire, of the world. Perhaps you would be ruling by my side, or already dead from an assassin's air gun. Perhaps I would be rotting in a London prison, or husband to a lady of the house of Saxe-Coburg, or the Dean of Christ Church. Perhaps you would be laid to rest in Covent Green as a result of self-poisoning yourself with cocaine, driven to the drug by boredom, or perhaps you would have channeled your ability to other ends and have been London's best barrister, or boxer, or violinist, or scientist. Perhaps--when one is speaking of what-ifs and if-onlys, then that is all one can ever say: perhaps.

And yet even the fleck of dust is driven by the same inexorable laws as the asteroid, set in motion at the universe's creation. A world without a Porluck is as unthinkable as a world without you or I. We are all apiece variables in the same equation. There could have been no fates for us, Holmes, that did not lead us inextricably to this moment. It is as if all the universe, asteroids and flecks of dust alike, were set in motion as to conspire to bring us to this moment, locked in each other's arms as we fall to our deaths, the roar of the falls of Reichenbach behind us.

You must admit, Holmes, there is a beauty in its symmetry. Even if the laws of reason did not demand it, still would the laws of poetry.


	2. You were not beautiful

You were not beautiful in the way that boys are sometimes beautiful, Holmes. Even as an adolescent you were already tall and lanky, and your nose--which your friend and chronicler Dr. Watson would call "hawk-like"--had already taken on its later figure. Still there was a sort of regal handsomeness to your features even then.

You had the figure of an athlete, and it was clear you were one of those lucky few who can cease participation of a sport and then, on a whim, pick it up again no worse for the lack of practice. You had traveled in a train that morning. Your parents were neither poor nor rich; you loved your mother but were aloof towards your father; you were not a virgin. You had already begun to smoke tobacco and use cocaine, but at that point both were infrequent and always in moderation. You were incredibly intelligent, but lacked direction. You were left-handed, put on your right shoe before the left, and had no more than three quid fifty in your waistcoat pocket.

All of this I saw in a glance; you know the methods--indeed, history will no doubt remember them as your own. Still, there were a thousand questions left unanswered.


	3. You were a miserable student

Surely you must admit that you were a miserable excuse for a student, Holmes. You gave your schoolwork no more than the most cursory attention, and while you had a quick and analytical mind that was ideally predisposed to mathematical reasoning, your mastery of even the lowest of the higher maths was abysmal. Your only interests were boxing, sword-fighting, and violin-playing, and in none of these areas was your interest quite enough to drive you to hone your skin to professional quality.

You absolutely refused to learn the calculus. "Can I carry an infinite number of pounds on me?" you asked of me. "Can I walk an infinite number of yards or live for an infinite number of years? The infinite appears nowhere in nature, and as thus the practical mind, dealing in what is real and thus finite, has no need of it. You tell me that if I cut a circle into an infinite number of pieces I can rearrange them so as to form a rectangle. I see the evident usefulness of such a piece of information in that it shall allow me to measure a circle should I need to do so, but why on earth should I need to know how or why this should be so?"

I shared my frustration with my colleague, Rutherford, a much-respected and learned man of science. "Aye, that's a Holmes for you," he responded. "They're a lazy sort. I taught his brother Mycroft, and it was the same story. Smartest lad I've ever known, but he lacked the ambition to put it to any use. I hear he has some petty clerkship in government now; he's not fit to be anything but a bureaucrat. I wouldn't be surprised if this Sherlock were the same story. A waste, I tell you, a real waste."

I was not going to let your singular mind go to waste. I argued and I fought, I prodded, I tried to demonstrate to you the beauty of mathematics, of a perfect world perfectly ordered, controlled by pure reason, mechanical and predictable.

Every word fell on deaf ears.


End file.
